Tag Archives: Davis

July 9, 2007 Blog Roundup

( – promoted by jsw)

Today’s Blog Roundup on the flip.

More on the
Schwarzenegger Resource Board Train Wreck

Other Environment Reports

Crime In San Francisco

Continuing Land Use
Conversations in Davis

Everything Else

July 7, 2007 Blog Roundup

Blog roundup on the flip. The labels should be self-explanatory.

Schwarzenegger’s Air
Resource Board Shenanigans

Health Care

California Politics


Local and Labor

Republicans Are What They
Are

Grade-In/Tutor-In Tuesday at MU Patio on UCD Campus

From the Academic Student Employee union (UAW #2865) at UC Davis:

As an important step toward winning our bargaining demands for improved workload protections, UAW 2865 members around the state are having a grade-in/tutor-in during finals week.  Our action will demonstrate to the University of California just how much work it takes to ensure the students at UC Davis get the quality education they deserve. Come out and show your support for increased workload protections while you get your work done.

WHO: All TAs, Graders, Tutors and Grad Students
WHAT: Grade-in/Tutor-In
WHERE: Memorial Union Patio
WHEN: Tuesday, June 12, 11:30am – 1pm

As contract negotiations have progressed, the administration has stalled having any serious discussion over workload.  As enrollment has steadily increased statewide, class and section sizes have ballooned, creating more work for Teaching Assistants, Tutors, and Readers. When we are overworked we cannot provide quality education to our students and we are slower to advance in our academic careers.  We are faced with pressure to speed up our work and do more with less. Employees want increased workload protections that would give the union a say over class and section size.

The Union has made several proposals to proactively prevent overworking that have not been addressed by the administration.  In addition to negotiating with UC administration over class and section sizes, TAs Tutors, and Readers also want to win the right to arbitrate over workload.  With the current contract, academic student employees cannot take workload grievances to arbitration, which means any workload disputes are settled by an internal university board rather than a neutral arbitrator.

We need to show the administration that the issue of workload is important to us and remind them how crucial our work is for the quality of education at the University of California.  Bring any exams or papers you need to grade or hold outdoor office hours/tutoring sessions and help send a strong message to the administration that they must address this key issue.

Grading makes finals week a crazy time of year for grad students who tutor or TA undergraduate classes, but most of the time the time that we put into that work is invisible to both the undergraduate students and the univeristy administration. The larger the section and the greater the workload, the harder it gets to do that grading to the best of one’s ability, and everyone on campus ends up losing as a result. As a way of raising the visibility of this critical work, and demonstrating to the administration that we are not just going to be pushovers in the rest of our contract negotiations this summer and into next fall quarter, please show up and get some grading done out on the MU patio. Similar events will be scheduled at the other quarter-based UC campuses, please feel free to post info in the comments.

This looks like a lot of fun, and a creative sort of protest to boot. See you all there!

originally at surf putah

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UPDATE The grade-in/tutor-in had a pretty good turnout for a finals week at noon (several TAs were busy proctoring final exams, and couldn’t make it), between 20 and 30 from my count, grading together on tables in the shade. The Enterprise had a reporter and photographer there interviewing some of the workers, and a fair number of curious undergraduates stopped by and wanted to know what was going on. All in all, a good way to get some visibility, and it beat grading in the office!

Here are a couple of pictures of the grade-in:

Sign 1: “Our Working Conditions =Student Learning Conditions”

Sign 2: “Education Without Exploitation”

A Teaching Moment:

ASE Graders At Work:

West Sac Gets Serious About Streetcars

(This seems like a no-brainer. – promoted by blogswarm)

Once upon a time, a network of streetcars and commuter trains knit the small cities of the Sacramento area together with the urban core. And then, for a variety of reasons – the popularization of automobiles, corporate buyouts, shifts in zoning laws and the rise of low-density suburban developments – the infrastructure that supported a walkable urban center withered away for a half century or so.

And yet recently, the cities of West Sacramento and Sacramento have been exploring the possibility of running a streetcar line across the Tower Bridge over to the Capital Mall, linking it up with Sacramento’s existing light rail system. This makes sense as part of a larger recent development trend towards reurbanization, reflected in the Railyards project in Sacramento and the flurry of condos being thrown up in West Sacramento. Were the population density to get high enough, and the streetcar priced reasonably enough to actually make the use of it a real alternative to driving across the Tower Bridge into Sac (or, in the other direction, from Sac to the Rivercats stadium), establishing a streetcar could help build the kind of walkable, urbane neighborhoods that this country used to have before the car changed everything, and which cities like Sacramento are going to need in the future when post-peak gas prices render low density development unfeasible.

And yet, that’s a big if, according to Sacramento History Blog. Sac History argues that the postwar shift to suburban development in West Sac and Sacramento’s other commuter burbs was what killed the streetcars in the first place. As housing density thinned out, and streetcar lines fanned further and further out from the core of the city, the cost of operating the trains at greater distances began to outstrip the revenue from a thinly-dispersed ridership scattered over a longer distance. Eventually, the streetcars went bust. If this plan is to avoid the same fate, higher levels of density are going to have to be planned and built along the streetcar route, to guarantee adequate ridership. Given the move towards higher density already underway, I think it’s entirely possible.

This ties into an interview that the Sacramento News and Review did with Sacramento Mayor Heather Fargo in its Earth Day edition a month ago. At the end of the interview, the discussion turned to transportation and sustainability:

On public transportation: There’s a recommendation in the master plan that there be affordable public transportation within a quarter mile of everybody? How do we do that?

I don’t know how feasible that is. I think there are some other things we need to think about. I think it’s relatively easy to provide transit in the urban core. But as you get further out and the densities go down and the model gets more suburban, I’m not sure how you do that. I’m not even sure it would be smart because you’d be driving a lot of miles to get to people who may or may not want to get on the bus.

You know, there’s a lot of interest in fixing up downtown and the central city and the urban core. It’s older, it’s funkier, it’s fun. But, frankly, it’s not that hard.

No one is really addressing how you fix the suburban model. It’s much more fun to figure out how to fix R Street, rather than trying to figure out how to fix Northgate [Boulevard].

You go to Valley Hi, or south Natomas, and try to get people to use transit. Are they really going to ride a bus to the grocery store? Maybe in places like that we just need to switch to little electric vehicles. You know, the little golf carts? Maybe we stripe the street differently, or not, and let people drive what normally wouldn’t be considered a street-safe vehicle on certain streets. But allow someone to take their little electric car to the grocery store, instead of their big gas-guzzling vehicles. Maybe that’s a way to reduce emissions and reduce congestion and make the community more livable. Otherwise, how do you ever make a community that’s six units to the acre dense enough to support transit?

You’re talking about retrofitting the suburbs.

Someone’s got to figure it out. We have this suburban pattern all over California. Our best brain-stormers typically have been central-city focused. It will be interesting to get people like the American Institute of Architects and others to think about, “OK, how do we fix it out there? What do we do?” I think we need to figure that out before we go any further north than North Natomas.

This is the real tough spot in the whole puzzle of sustainability. How to retrofit the suburbs in terms of transportation infrastructure so that they can transition down the line to a reality where gas is so expensive (and the environmental costs of carbon emissions are so destructive) that it threatens the very car commuter culture that they were planned around? How do we fix that, or tinker with it to make it get by somehow?

Commuter rail is one existing solution, running more and more trains on existing lines such as the Capital Corridor, and perhaps running new lines out on the old tracks to Woodland or Winters, or up the Valley to Yuba City or Marysville, but what I’d really like to see is the light rail extended out to Davis, like they were talking about back in the early 90s. I would much rather hop a train or light rail and not have to bother with the mad commute of Hummers on speed through the tangle.  Truth be told, I’d probably spend a lot more time in Sacramento if there was such an extension.

Feeder networks are the other side, making sure that you’ve got good bus networks, or bike lanes, or even just adequate train station parking, feeding people into the big mass transit nodes at both ends. Sacramento’s light rail is getting better about this, and in Davis, Unitrans buses are somewhat useful for getting to the university, but less so for getting to the train station directly (and at any rate, the use of natural gas may bite us as that peaks down the road as well). The electric cars that Fargo talks about are all over the place here in Davis, and might be another good solution, especially given our plentiful sun and wind that could be tapped for energy needs in the suture (DMUD, anyone?). Many other suburbs have a long way to go in that regard, though, and I hope Fargo and other forward-thinking mayors and city councils are starting to think about it. And as I wrote a while ago, increasing the urban density in existing cities’ downtowns, within walking distance of things like train stations and basic amenities, could help to alleviate future post-peak transportation pressures as well.

California invented sprawl. Hopefully we can invent a way out of it as well that still allows the next generation to afford housing.

originally at surf putah

What, Fee Increases Aren’t Enough? – UC Tries To Stiff Graduate Students In Upcoming Contract

(Crap… What’s going on in our institutions of higher learning? – promoted by atdleft)

In their ever-continuing quest to turn California’s public higher education into a de facto private institution, the University of California, not content with jacking up graduate student tuition yet another 10% (and nearly doubling fees since 2002), is now trying to stiff TAs, readers, and research assistants in the latest series of contract negotiations by freezing fee remissions and health insurance premiums:

The UAW Local 2865 bargaining team met Monday, April 16 with university representatives to discuss changes the university would like to make to our contract.

Unfortunately, the bargaining team was alarmed by the uncooperative, antiunion tactics of the university. The university is proposing to cut a number of critical benefits and roll back several groundbreaking union victories. Not only would these cuts and rollbacks have a negative financial impact on all our members, they would also undermine the ability of UC to continue to be competitive, encourage diversity, and attract the best and brightest.

FEE REMISSIONS
At the same time that we are proposing to expand the types of fees covered and who is eligible to receive remissions, the university is proposing to end full fee remissions for graduate-student employees, proposing instead to cap remissions. What this would mean is that whenever fees increase-which is the unfortunate trend-we would end up paying that increase out-of-pocket.

HEALTH INSURANCE
Additionally, under the current contract, many of us have our health insurance premium fully covered. Again, while we are proposing to expand the types of fees covered and who is eligible to receive remissions, the university is proposing to cap our health insurance premium remissions at a fixed dollar amount, thus transferring the rising cost of health care onto us. Given that the health plans at many campuses are already inadequate and steadily deteriorating, this proposal is unacceptable.

The university also made several proposals which would prevent teaching assistants, readers, and tutors from being informed of their rights, and which would limit our rights to express solidarity with workers in other campus unions.

The university is proposing to take us in the wrong direction. This is unacceptable. As bargaining continues, we will keep you informed of developments at the bargaining table and opportunities to participate in winning a great fourth contract.  If you have questions or would like to get more involved, please reply to this message or contact your campus office.

In solidarity,

UAW Local 2865 Bargaining Committee

This is not the first time that the university has tried this, but it is pretty bad news that they’re looking to freeze remissions while the fees continue skyrocketing this way. For most UC graduate students, fee remission and health care coverage when working for the university are the only way to make ends meet, and often their value is far greater than the actual pay that the work provides.

I have heard many fellow grad students wonder  aloud what the point of paying those union fees is. Here is my answer: the only reason why we even have health insurance and fee remissions when we work is that grad students organized and were willing to strike to make the point that the University of California does not run without our labor. The Regents do not just pay us out of the goodness of their hearts, and they will not continue to respect what gains we have negotiated in perpetuity, out of the goodness of their hearts. Only by organizing and demonstrating the value of the work that we do by being willing to deny it if need be, will we get the kind of pay and benefits that allow us to scratch out a public graduate school education.

Academic student employees are not asking for an unreasonable amount of pay or benefits here. The University of California has been utterly unreasonable in raising fees over the past several years, far beyond the rate of inflation and at the same time that executive and administration salaries and compensation have skyrocketed. This latest attempt to further wring more money out of already-indebted graduate students is unconscionable. I would hope that our elected representatives would take notice, in particular Davis’ own Assemblywoman Lois Wolk, and Lt. Governor John Garamendi, who is a Regent for the UC system (and whose son, John Garamendi, Jr., is an administrator at UC Merced, and reportedly considering challenging Lois Wolk for the 5th State Senate Seat). There are a lot of academic employees here in Yolo County, and we do vote.

If you are a grad student and interested in getting involved on any of the UC campuses, bookmark the Academic Student Employee union page. If this negotiation continues in this direction, we’re going to need as many students working together as we can to turn things around.

originally at surf putah

ASUCD Supports Food Service Workers – Rally This Thursday

(Oops! Sorry that I didn’t notice this earlier. But anyways, best of luck to the UCD food workers! : ) – promoted by atdleft)


As the Aggie reported today, The Associated Students of UC Davis voted 10 to 1 (one abstention due to absence) in favor of supporting the workers of Sodexho in their efforts to become University employees and have the right to unionize. Currently, UCD contracts out food service at the Silo and elsewhere to Sodexho, a private company with a terrible labor record which has fought employee attempts to unionize and to get better wages and benefits all across the country. UC Davis is currently the only University of California still subcontracting out food service to a private company, now that UC Irvine food service workers got recognition as university workers last year.

What is heartening about ASUCD’s vote is that the traditional tactic of trying to play students and workers off against one another – often playing upon class identity – doesn’t seem to be working. Of course, many Sodexho workers are students, which could be one reason for the solidarity. Still, it is great to see, since we all do better, as workers and as citizens, when we stand together and stand up for one another’s rights to a decent wage and to organize.

For those interested in supporting the food service workers, there will be a rally on March 1st, this coming Thursday, meeting at 11 AM at the MU, marching to Mrak Hall, and then rallying in front of Mrak Hall at around 11:45 AM. See you there.

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In related labor news, CSU faculty move closer to a strike over the issue of CSU salaries, which lag some 18% below the national average. Given the repeated bonuses and raises given to the regents and administrators, it really is unconscionable for the pay disparity to be so great.

originally at surf putah

And It Begins – Cabaldon Announces for the 8th Assembly District

(This is better than the quick diary that I wrote. – promoted by Brian Leubitz)

Well, it’s not exactly a surprise, but the entry of Chris Cabaldon – West Sacramento five-time mayor and runner-up to current Assemblywoman Lois Wolk (D-Davis) in 2002 – into the race officially begins the campaign to succeed Wolk in 2008, who is term limited and will be running for State Senate to replace Mike Machado (D-Linden) in the fifth district. Ah, you gotta love the term limits-induced merry-go-round in Sacramento.

The 8th district includes most of Yolo and Solano Counties, minus the city of Vallejo and the rural parts of Yolo County north of Woodland; in a nutshell, the I-80 corridor. The district is strongly Democratic, ad the winner of the Democratic primary will be heavily, possibly prohibitively favored to win the general.

Cabaldon’s announcement, interestingly enough, was in Davis in front of the train station, not West Sacramento, and he was flanked by Democratic officeholders from all over Yolo County – from Davis, County Supervisor and former Assemblywoman Helen Thompson, City Councilman Don Saylor, and Mayor pro tem Ruth Asmundson; From Woodland, County Sheriff and mayor Dave Flory, Vice Mayor Skip Davies, and City Councilman Jeff Monroe; From West Sacramento, County Supervisor Mike McGowan, Vice Mayor Oscar Villegas and City Councilmen Wes Beers and Mark Johannessen. One notable absence was outgoing Assemblywoman Lois Wolk, who has not yet announced who she is endorsing, if any, in the race to replace her. Republican County Supervisor Matt Rexroad, while not endorsing anybody in the race (claiming that his endorsement would be “the kiss of death” anyways), looks to me to be endorsing Cabaldon between the lines in this post (which is currently down; I’ll re-link it when his site gets back up and running). Clearly, Cabaldon is trying to get himself out there early as the Yolo County candidate, before anyone else announces.

Cabaldon’s supporters and detractors tend to cite the same thing – building in West Sacramento – to support their opinions. Supporters tend to point to his bringing Ikea to West Sac and contruction of condo housing as part of the recent revitalization of the port city; detractors tend to view him as excessively pro-corporate and pro-sprawl, and Cabaldon’s current campaigning on the issue of controlling urban sprawl to be hypocritical. Not really ever having set foot in West Sacramento before or after Cabaldon’s tenure, I can’t really say one way or the other whether it helped or hurt the city, but that’s the discussion. I don’t suspect that Cabaldon’s having come out last year as gay will affect the race much either way, since the district and most of his competitors are pretty socially liberal.

Those rumored to be considering a run are Steve Hardy (D-Vacaville), a City Councilman from Vacaville who came in 3rd in the 2002 primary, and Yolo County Supervisor Mariko Yamada (D-Davis), who was involved with the short-lived Davis DFA meetup and is generally considered to be the progressive candidate in the race. Having gotten to know Mariko a bit during the Dean campaign (over before it began, sadly), I hope she runs.

For those interested, there are a couple good discussions simmering on over at The Davis Vanguard on Cabaldon (here and here), as well as potential challengers here.

If the California presidential primary is moved to February, the state races will be the second in a series of three elections in ’08, and will likely end up with pretty low turnout. Who this helps is anybody’s guess this far out.At any rate, it should be fun to watch, and if the rumored Wolk-Garamendi, jr. race in the 5th State Senate district also pans out, 2008 could be a very exciting year for Yolo politics.

related websites:

Christopher Cabaldon for Assembly
Mariko Yamada’s County Supervisor page
Steve Hardy’s City Council page (scroll down)

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originally at surf putah

Blog Roundup, January 22, 2007

The California Blog Roundup is back, baybee. Teasers: Presidential primaries, Nancy Pelosi and the First 100 Hours, Merced, Los Angeles, Ojai, San Diego (Carol Lam), Davis, Mark Leno, Carole Migden, Iraq, John Doolittle, CA-11, Gary Miller, CA-42, Ken Calvert, CA-44, Global Warming, Health Care.

The Silly Season is upon us

Boy, Nancy

Local Politics

Republican Paragons

Iraq is Here

The Rest

Sign Me Up

A “Far-Left” Manifesto for Yolo County

(Surf Putah, which you will find in the California friends of our blogroll, is a great site for Yolo Cty. politics. – promoted by Brian Leubitz)

Well, I’ve made the cut, having been linked in the “Yolo Blogs” category over at Republican Yolo County Supervisor Matt Rexroad’s new website (which looks quite nice, really). Along with the link (a good web resource for Yolo County in its own right), Rexroad gave this site this little introduction:

If you want to know what the people at the far end of the spectrum in Davis are doing….surf Putah.  I really can’t explain this stuff. Generally, if you find an opinion expressed here Matt Rexroad will be on the other side.

Since I’ve been identified as the far end of the spectrum, I figure that it’s as good a time as any to lay out what us inexplicable far-out Davisites are thinking about Yolo County. Ironically enough, I find myself to the center, or at least in a slightly different direction, from many self-defined “progressives” here in Davis, especially on the issue of development, the axis which city politics seems, rightly or wrongly, to revolve around. Mostly, though, I find that the perpetual battle over political labels to be a fairly useless one, since it assumes a coherent binary political debate, when in fact things tend to be far more complex in real life. I believe that governments ought to balance their budgets responsibly, instead of borrowing and spending with bond measures; am I a conservative? I believe that people generally ought to mind their own business, and that government and religious beliefs are best kept separate where neither can mess the other up; am I a liberal? I believe that all people are created equal, and ought to be treated as such; am I a progressive?

So for the benefit of both Rexroad and those who might follow his link to my site I’ll toss out where this inexplicable far-left blogger would like to see Yolo County headed:

1. Making it possible for Yolo farmers and ranchers to make a decent living, so that they can grow crops instead of subdivisions. The reasons why it is getting harder and harder for small farmers and ranchers to get by are complex, and the roots of the problem more often than not lie well outside of Yolo County. And yet, preserving a healthy and locally-rooted agricultural industry is something that should be central to any vision of a future Yolo County. Protecting farmland from development by easements, or buyouts is one way to help curb development pressure on productive ag land, but it is perhaps more important to ease the market pressures of falling agricultural commodity prices and rising fuel and other operating costs. Encouraging fuel-intensive or alternate fuel usage, aided by ag research over at UC Davis, might help to insulate Yolo agriculture from rising gas prices. Requiring school lunches to preference local farmers and ranchers might help to provide more demand for those products. Teaching gardening in elementary school, as they do at Fairfield Elementary school out in the county, might help to diminish the urban-rural split as well, and give our kids more appreciation for the folks who grow their food.Encouraging new agricultural industries in the county to replace the loss of all those closed tomato canneries in the past decade would help too.

Ultimately, reversing the decades-long national policy of free trade deals that flood domestic markets with foreign imports, and national policies that encourage overproduction are the real key to saving the family farm. Food is one thing, like military technology, that is a bad idea to rely on foreign imports for. We shouldn’t be flying walnuts in all the way from China when we can grow them out perfectly well in Winters.

2. Keeping development off the floodplain, and strengthening the flood control measures where we have already built close to rivers. The Yolo Bypass is a sound approach to the long-term pressures of river systems and seasonal flooding, and Yolo County has been smarter than many counties in this regard. Woodland desperately needs some way of guarding against winter flooding on Cache Creek, and hopefully some hydraulically sound solution will be found in the next couple of years, whether it be stronger levees or some bypass channel upstream of town. While the pressure for more housing is and will continue to be acute because of population growth (more on that below), we need to be steadfast about avoiding Natomas-style floodplain sprawl, because the moment any houses are built there we will collectively be liable for paying for their protection, indefinitely. In places such as West Sacramento, where flooding will always be a problem, we need to make sure that their levees are hardened to withstand severe flooding.

3. Providing adequate housing so that the children of Yolo residents can afford to actually live in their hometowns. This is one area where I part ways with many Davis progressives, in that I do not believe that a no growth or even slow growth model is either smart or just. When a town limits its housing stock like Davis has done, it might preserve the population size of ther town, but the nature of the community cannot but change with the skyrocketing housing prices. As long as people continue to have children, as long as the university increases its student and professorial population (which it will, since it is tied to state demographic growth), and as long as people want to move into this county of ours, we are going to have to have reasonable housing options. Yolo County has both one of the higher rates of growth in the state as well as one of the higher birthrates. All those people are going to have to find somewhere to live.

My sense is that we’d be better off encouraging the cities of Yolo county to start urbanizing in their downtown cores, close to the highways and train stations, to at bare minimum a level of density that our cities reached at the turn of the 19th century (the tallest buildings in most Yolo towns are perversely often the oldest ones). Build up a couple stories, get some people in those downtowns, and then get the downtowns built up along walkable, new urbanist lines, so that people don’t have to drive everywhere just to go about everyday life. This will allow more housing to be efficiently defended by floodwalls where floods threaten, and it should make room for many Yoloites who are currently priced out of even renting here anymore, let alone own houses. Additionally, when suburban housing is built, aim for smaller lots and smaller two story houses the way you used to see in the 20s and 30s, instead of the spread-out ranch tract housing that uses land as if it’s still cheap. Land is expensive, and denser housing makes better and more economical use of that land. And enough already with the huge luxury mcmansion developments for out of towners.

4. Support more small businesses to fulfill city needs, avoid big box megastores. As I wrote during the Measure K debate last November, there is a need for more and better retail in Yolo County, especially here in luxury boutique-saturated downtown Davis, but that we ought to be encouraging small and locally owned businesses to fulfill those needs rather than inviting big box retailers in to suck up the whole market, and siphon that revenue out of the county to some out of state corporate headquarters. Far too often it is posed as a false choice between the status quo and big box megastores, when in fact a third way is possible. One of the problems is that commercial rent is far too high in Davis, but as best as can be done, the city governments and county government should work to ease whatever barriers to starting businesses exist for small local businesses.

5. While this might be seen by some as working at cross-purposes to #4, we really need a living wage for the county, to say nothing of the über-expensive city of Davis as well. People who work in town ought to be able to afford to live in the same communities, or failing that, in the county. While the statewide minimum wage hike of $7.50 goes partway, a hike to a living wage of $10 or higher would help a great deal, and lessen the class segregation that we get when rents get so rediculously high. Living wage ordinances in other towns have shown that they don’t destroy the local economy as predicted, and that the recipients of those wages tend to plough most of that money back into the local economy, creating a virtuous economic cycle. Finally, a living wage is simply the right thing to do, since anybody who works hard every day at a job, any job, deserves the dignity of being able to make ends meet.

6. Along with this, since the National and State governments seem incapable of getting universal health insurance passed, we need to find some way of at least covering children, from prenatal through delivery and child medical care. A significant number of the working poor in Yolo County either are children or have children, and helping to cover the often exorbitant costs of child healthcare would not only go a long way towards lessening that burden on those families (in effect, a net wage raise), it would also help to guarantee that those children got adequate health care, immunizations and so on. This in turn helps to limit problems for the county down the road dealing with epidemics and overtaxed emergency rooms. Disease does not recognize any difference between rich or poor, insured or uninsured, citizen or immigrant; we’ve all seen how quickly a cold or flu can move through an elementary school or a daycare.

Anyone who claims to be in favor of family values ought to be willing to help make sure that people don’t get bankrupted by the costs of giving birth, let alone raising a kid. It is in our best interest personally as well as as a societally to make sure that these kids are covered, at least until the state and federal government get their acts together and get something funded. Since Yolo is a fairly poor county government-wise, this will have to be a fairly bare bones plan without accompanying state funding, not unlike any serious levee solutions. Assemblywoman Wolk, we’re counting on you to help talk some sense into the Governor.

7. More state parks. We have in this county both beautiful hiking up in the hills to the west of us, as well as a beautiful river to the east. Why there aren’t more state parks or recreational infrastructure helping people to get to them is beyond me.

8. The reestablishment of the old interurban train network in the Central Valley. The Capitol Corridor has been a great success since its inception a decade ago, but relatively little work has been done to apply the same logic to the Valley itself, and try and link the cities and towns of the Sacramento Valley together like they once were abnout a century ago, before the rise of auto-fueled sprawl. The old train lines are still there, connecting most cities up and down the valley to Sacramento, and yet they sit virtually unused for commuter traffic. Fixing them up a bit and running basic commuter lines on them would help to take traffic pressure off the highway system, and help us to accomodate what population growth the region will see in the decades to come. It also uses a lot more fuel, which brings us to the next point:

9. Countywide efforts at conservation and alternative energy. As our populations grow, and global warming gives us hotter, dryer summers, we will see increased stresses on our water and electric usage. As peak oil runs hard into increasing global demands for fuel, gasoline and natural gas are going to persistantly rise in price, hurting commuters, farmers and businesses alike. We should be getting ahead of the curve by working to lower our communities’ water and energy footprints, and thus our exposure to price increases and shortages. Having UCD’s stellar environmental engineering research at the ready is a huge advantage; let’s take advantage of it.

10. A justice system that treats all Yolo residents as equal members of their communities, that serves and protects Black and Latino citizens as well as White citizens. Doug Paul Davis over at the Davis Vanguard has done such great reporting on this issue that I won’t try to duplicate it, but rest assured our police forces and justice system need serious revamping on the issues of racial profiling and how we combat crime in general. While gang violence is real, criminalizing an entire neighborhood, as was done in West Sacramento, seems to me to violate the rights of the very citizens that our justice system is ostensibly supposed to protect. Likewise, while out of towners commit crimes in town, treating huge swathes of our community as perpetual suspects does real and lasting harm to the community as a whole. We can do better.

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So there you have it, one Yoloite’s “far-left” take on things. While I expect that Matt and I disagree on several of these issues, i’m not sure that he and I are diametrically opposed on all of them. Statewide and nationally, however, I suspect that our political differences are clearer and less common ground possible to reach. I leave the question of whether the above opinions are way off the end of the spectrum up to the reader.

(originally posted at surf putah